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The Spirit of May 35th

You might think May 35th is an imaginary date, but in China it’s a real one. Here, where references to June 4 — the date of the Tiananmen incident of 1989 — are banned from the Internet, people use “May 35th” to circumvent censorship and commemorate the events of that day.

Earlier this year I visited Taiwan, where my book China in Ten Words had just been released. “Why can’t this book be published in mainland China,” I was asked, “when your novel Brothers can?”

That’s the difference between fiction and nonfiction: Although both books are about contemporary China, Brothers touches on things obliquely and so slips through the net, whereas China in Ten Words, by straight talking, goes beyond the pale.

“Brothers does a May 35th,” I explained, “and China in Ten Words is more like June 4th.”

To express oneself in May 35th terms is standard practice these days. According to the latest figures, there are 457 million Internet users in China, and 303 million Chinese can access the Web on their cellphones. It’s a big job to keep all these onliners in line, and the government’s most effective control mechanism is to designate certain words as unacceptable and simply prohibit their use on the Internet.

So people who hanker to express their own views find that their voices are muffled. Internet servers — automated censors, you might call them — are assiduous in blocking any and all commentary that involves these red-flagged phrases.

I once tried to post online a literary essay of mine. Though it made no reference whatsoever to politics, an error message kept popping up. Innocently, I assumed I must have miswritten a character or two, and marveled that technology could detect typos so easily. But after careful proofreading and revision of the odd phrase here and there, that frosty error message continued to appear. Finally I realized that the text had violated several taboos. Though widely scattered in different paragraphs, the offending words left the automated censors with little doubt that I was indulging in political dissent.

We have no way of knowing how many words have been blacklisted, or which once-banned words can now be used. Sometimes you can manage to avoid all the taboos and post your opinion, but if it is couched in too explicit an idiom, it will get deleted almost right away.

So we adapt. With the Chinese government so bent on promoting a “harmonious society,” Internet users slyly tailor the phrase for their own purposes. If someone writes, “Be careful you don’t get harmonized,” what they mean is “Be careful you don’t get shut down” or “Be careful you don’t get arrested.” Harmonize has to be the word most thoroughly imbued with the May 35th spirit. Officials are aware, of course, of its barbed meaning on the Internet, but they can hardly ban it, because to do so would be to outlaw the “harmonious society” they are plugging. Harmony has been hijacked by the public.

Such is China’s Internet politics. Practically everyone has mastered the art of May 35th expression, and I myself am no slouch.

I’ve had a go at broaching freedom-of-expression issues. I once posted an article referring to a talk I gave in Munich. The post said: “I was asked: ‘Is there freedom of expression in China?’ ‘Of course there is,’ I replied. ‘In any country,’ I went on, ‘freedom of expression is relative. In Germany you can curse the chancellor, but you wouldn’t dare curse your neighbor. In China we can’t curse our premier, but we’re free to curse the guy next door.’ ”

On the concentration of power in China, I wrote: “In Taiwan I told a reporter, ‘You need to wear gloves when you shake hands with politicians here, because they are always out canvassing and shaking hands with people. You don’t need gloves on the mainland, because our politicians never have to press the flesh. You won’t find many germs on their fingers.”

Since the first remark seems to emphasize that everything is relative and the other appears to focus on matters of hygiene, both were posted on the Internet without incident. My readers know what I’m getting at.

I have always written much as I please in the May 35th mode, and for that I have the fictional form to thank, since fiction is not overtly political and by its nature lends itself to May 35th turns of phrase. Writing in the June 4th mode, as I did in China in Ten Words, was a departure from my normal practice.

The question asked most often in Taiwan was, “If you had an 11th word to describe China, what would it be?”

“Freedom,” I answered.

What I meant by that, of course, was not the familiar June 4th sort of freedom, but this more recondite May 35th kind.

May 35th freedom is an art form. To evade censorship when expressing their opinions on the Internet, Chinese people give full rein to the rhetorical functions of language, elevating to a sublime level both innuendo and metaphor, parody and hyperbole, conveying sarcasm and scorn through veiled gibes and wily indirection.

Surely our language has never been as rich and vital as it is today. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder, if one day the June 4th kind of freedom were to arrive, would we still be so creative, so ingenious?

Perhaps we can describe China’s Internet politics as a cat-and-mouse game. But you should not imagine China’s Internet mice to be as mighty as the mouse in a Disney cartoon, nor are our government flunkies as dumb as a cartoon cat. When our Internet mice taunt their adversaries, they make sure to have a bolt-hole right next to them. In China today, more and more people want to hear the truth but not many dare to speak it. And so, even if our Internet mice play only a game of wits with the government cats and do not engage in an action sport, it still remains a source of comfort to us — because we don’t have the June 4th kind of freedom, only the May 35th variety.

Yu Hua was born in Hangzhou in 1960. Shortly after the Cultural Revolution he was assigned to become a dentist. After peering into people’s mouths for five years, he decided to become a writer. He made his name in the late 1980s with a series of disturbing short stories. Since then he has written four novels, including “To Live” and “Brothers”; several volumes of essays; and refined the art of circumventing censorship. His book “China in Ten Words,” will be published in November.